The Waitangi Tribunal has set new targets for resolving Treaty claims, aiming to have all land-based and historic claims resolved by 2020.

Excellent. The Waitangi Tribunal plays a useful role in investigating and reporting on historic claims, helping Iwi and the Crown reach settlements.

“These inquiries have played an important role in assisting iwi and the Crown to resolve historic claims under the Treaty of Waitangi, as well as broadening all New Zealanders’ understanding of the role of the Treaty in our nation’s past, present and future,” he said.

The tribunal’s focus would shift from the completion of those inquiries to hearing kaupapa (issue-based) and contemporary claims.

Kaupapa claims involved issues of national significance such as the inquiries into the recognition of the Maori language, New Zealand’s law and policy affecting Maori culture and identity and national freshwater and geothermal issues.

Contemporary claims, such as that relating to the decision to leave the sunken Rena where it lay, related to the application of the Treaty to modern-day issues that have occurred since 21 September 1992, Judge Isaac said.

I’m less convinced that we should keep the Tribunal to hear contemporary claims. I’d rather we give Iwi the right to go to the High Court and get a declaratory judgement that a certain action was in breach of the Treaty. I think the Tribunal has played a useful role with the historical claims, but contemporary claims are, in my opinion, better suited to a court of law.

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89 Responses to “Should we keep the Waitangi Tribunal once the historical claims are settled?”

The Tribunal should never have been created. It represents appeasement to racism and pandering by easily fooled gutless white liberals.

There is no way that the current generation of NZers (from all cultural backgrounds) should be paying “reparations” for events that occurred so long ago to victims that are long dead.

Furthermore anyone who actually believes these claims will be satisfied by 2020 is dreaming. There will be more claims and more taxpayer money paid out. Its very apparent that no party has the guts to stop this disgusting injustice and exploitation of the working people of NZ.

We don’t have to “give” iwi the right to go to the High Court David…they are able to do so now…If they form incorporated societies its even easier…(clears up issues of standing)

With the greatest of respect to you, it is utterly naïve to believe either that these latest “full and final” settlements will be anything of the sort (the Maori Party is on record as saying that what has been paid is just the latest instalment), or that “historic” claims will magically stop in 2020 or whatever the latest number is.

By way of background, there is NO threshold test for registering a claim in the Tribunal. Just as we have had claims relating to ownership of radio waves, offshore oil and gas, even to ALL native flora and fauna. Each are solemnly registered for consideration at some future time.

Future “historic” claims will become a bit like historic sex abuse allegations: “On her deathbed Aunty Huia told me about what her Grandmother had said to her regarding her iwi’s ownership of 262 – 280 Queen Street, and how the land was taken without compensation”…If they register claims to offshore oil and gas, why on earth would the Tribunal not register that, for “investigation”?

Red: I have just seen a pink pig flying past, but I am compelled to agree with everything you have said on this one.

Guys, get used to it,…it is not dissimilar to the result of any CIR on capital punishment – even if 90% of people voted to abolish the Tribunal no government would have the guts to do it…Well, by 2020 the Conservatives, and the Extremely Right Right Wing Party (ERRP for short) might have enough seats to make it a deal breaker on confidence and supply..

I see the 1law4all party has applied for registration Red…how are the numbers going at your prospective party’s HQ?

The Waitangi Tribunal is a divisive stain upon NZ and should be dispensed with after these elections. It was a farce when it was established, with reports of people making claims based on a few irrelevant photocopied documents.

Contemporary claims or historical claims, they are all false. We already have the rule of law in this country and that law is for all people. if a claim cannot stand within the existing legal framework then historical or contemporary IT HAS NO MERIT.

The Waitangi Tribunal is the modern face of apartheid and the millions that have been spent n assuaging the claims of those who have engaged with this monstrous stain on our society should never have been paid out. A complete and utter farce that would be judged criminal if this country was governed as it should be.

The country can’t afford to keep throwing endless amounts of money towards Maori. They need to help themselves. They collectively have around 50bn of assets, untold amounts of undeveloped land that attracts no rates more often than not, and a massive welfare state that we also can’t afford to fall back on.

I wonder whether Maori have a disaffection for Chinese immigration because they’ve twigged that not only are they taking the jobs and houses, but they also won’t be interested in throwing money at them like guilt ridden white kiwis do.

Bit of a double edged sword. The more we keep spending recklessly on unproductive areas, the more immigrants are required to lift productivity. Those immigrants, as I’ve said before, could give two shits about the tangata whenua

‘The Waitangi Tribunal plays a useful role in investigating and reporting on historical claims’

They have failed to investigate the truth and at last there are some out there who have been doing the research that exposes what really happened and how we as a nation have been led down the garden path by this appalling body.

It should never have been set up and has no balance.Only one side is ever presented.

“Ignorance and prejudice meant that Chinese were seen as undesirable – a number of harsh laws limited their rights in New Zealand. To restrict immigration, in 1881 the government charged them a poll tax (entry fee) of £10, later raised to £100. This taxation continued until 1934.”

Don’t know about the high court, they might get the samee judge as that long haired git the other day. I reckon they should de-rail the gravy train today and lift the embago on the 105 sites around the country we aren’t alowed to know anything about.

Red: surely you can offer your services to the 1law4all party? You are something of an expert on getting policies heard…arent you?

The link Other Andy has posted leads to an article which should be required reading for everyone on this thread…particularly, dare I say it, you DPF…

My question is simple: NONE of the eleven “full and final” settlements (I didnt realise there were that many, but the article is well referenced) thus far have endured..Why on earth would you believe that these latest ones will be any more “full and final” than the many which preceded them?

My detailed knowledge only extends to the major raupatu settlements of the 1940s – each of them put into law as these latest ones have been; the terms of each of them honoured by the Crown. Didn’t make a blind bit of difference…50 years later it was as if they had never happened, and all three were re-negotiated.

Now that it is so fashionable, I do wish I had a smidgen of Maori blood…just enough to get tanned easily in the summer..but more importantly to have enough credible whakapapa to set up as a “Treaty Lawyer”…Could have made millions…and then passed the practice on to my highly intelligent and bolshie daughter…who would have only half the Maori blood I had, but what would that matter?

Get rid of the Tribunal now, it is a breeding ground for leeches, worse than the average public servants, all with senses of entitlement and devoid of honesty or work ethics. It should never have been created in the first place.

There is big money in being Maori ™ and having a Greivance ™ on your shoulder.

Every few decades, a new generation of pc liberals will be tripping over their own heels in their eagerness to assuage their trendy white colonial guilt with a cash payment of a billion or three of someone else’s money.

“The Waitangi Tribunal is the modern face of apartheid and the millions that have been spent n assuaging the claims of those who have engaged with this monstrous stain on our society should never have been paid out. A complete and utter farce that would be judged criminal if this country was governed as it should be.”

So true. None of the claims today are legitimate – they are fraudulent. Everything was settled years ago. Today’s claims are based on Sir Geoffery Palmer’s invented Principles of the Treaty that were put into law in the 1980’s. Also they are using an earlier English draft of the Treaty which omits the important words ‘and all New Zealanders’ but has the words ‘Forests and Fisheries’ which aren’t in the Maori Treaty which is the one we should all be going by. In the late 19th century there were only 9 claims and they have long been settled. However more claims emerged later and they were all settled mid 20th century. If you want to know what the Maori version says the final English draft was found in 1989 and is dated a day later than the one in legislation. It has the words ‘and all New Zealanders’ and omits the words ‘Forests and Fisheries’. It mirrors the Maori version.

Everything is there and being added to as more information comes to light.

Anyone who thinks today’s claims are full and final is living in lala land. Different people have made it very clear that they will never end. Just take Ngai Tahu for instance. They have had five full and final(!!) settlements and now they have had a top-up because someone was paid out over a certain figure. It will just go on and on – and for what? The claims are totally fraudulent. What does ‘full and final’ really mean? To them – it’s just a figure of speech.

The United States has both Federal law and State law. Laws amongst the the various States are often different. Some have legalized marijuana for example, some have not. Is this a problem for anyone here on KB? If not, what is the difference?

Moreover, many Native American tribes also have their own laws, and their own police and courts. The sky has not fallen as a result.

So a union of diverse legal entities and forms is possible, and I would argue the US proves it can work. More importantly, I want to argue that this is a far more genuinely Conservative approach than the kind of Statist unity and conformity being advocated here. One law for all reeks of both Statism and Socialism.

“Excellent. The Waitangi Tribunal plays a useful role in investigating and reporting on historic claims, helping Iwi and the Crown reach settlements.”…………Utter nonsense they re-invent and distort history as they go.

Its typical of your prog mindset though that you would categorise anyone who doesn’t agree with you or simply does not like you as a “hater”.

Just as self professed Maoris will call anyone who disagrees with them a “racist’. That same tactic. The idea is to demonise and categorise as unacceptable outliers those who dare to disagree with what progressives claim is the only reasonable and morally correct approach.

Hater, racist, …..phobe. Its all the same language and all the same kind of disgusting smearing strategy that the cultural Marxists have used successfully for some time now. But its a trick they’re not going to get away with forever. People are waking up.

I think DPF is a fantastic fellow and I really enjoy the way he has an open mind and encourages different points of view.
That being said he is a liberal and tends to look at things through rose coloured spectacles and believes that people are basically good.
As for myself being a Christian and somewhat of a Conservative I believe in the basic badness of people and our propensity to sin. That’s why I am incredibly sceptical of the idea that treaty settlements will be wrapped up by 2020. Human nature is such that people will keep asking for more until some person with courage and conviction says “no, enough!”

Lest you think that I am blindly led by my religious beliefs I offer this small piece of evidence in support of my view.

On February 25 of this year it was reported that the deadline for the settlements has unfortunately been put back to 2017 instead of the 2014 goal that the government had been working towards.
It was also reported that in 1994 a previous government had tried to cap Treaty claims at $1 billion but this was rejected after vociferous opposition from Maori groups.

Now here we are in July of the same year that it was reported that treaty settlements would be put back to 2017 and we find that instead treaty settlements will be put back to 2020.

Victoria University School of Maori Studies Associate Professor Peter Adds says “in the short term finalising all settlements will bring calm, but some finalised settlements will continue to be re-litigated because the breaches committed were “horrific”.
“There simply isn’t money and enough assets to provide justice.”

For some people there will never be Justice and there will never be enough money and this will go on and on for ever until such time as we have the intestinal fortitude to say stop!

Unity: Well said, but you are wrong in one crucial point – it wasn’t Palmer who “put the Treaty principles into law”, rather it was his omitting to do so in the SOE’s Act which gave Sir Robin Cooke and his merry band on the then Court of Appeal the opening to make up and insert some principles of their own. Those principles date from the case Maori Council v. Attorney General.

As I have said here before, I have it on excellent authority – Sir Roger D who was there – that the Lange cabinet asked Palmer what s.9 of the SOE’s Act meant (which referred to “principles of the Treaty”) and he replied “Nothing…the reference is meaningless window dressing.”

Professor Sir Geoffrey is directly responsible for the ongoing hugely expensive joke that these claims will become, well beyond our life spans…

Manolo: Well said…if only I could find some Maori in the family tree…bit difficult when mother was a frog and father’s father was born in England…

DG: Geoffrey Palmer and Lange stated prior to the 1984 election, “Vote for us and we will honour the Treaty”, and it has kept NZ broke ever since. The Treaty and the Tribunal should be dispensed with forthwith!

People should honour their agreements. There is no particular reason not to do so here except that we’d prefer not to pay any more.

But we don’t want a society where people have different legal rights based on race. The honest way to achieve that is to buy our way out – reach a cash settlement in exchange for ending any right to future claims. Not just use the power of the majority to unilaterally cancel an agreement without compensation.

Nigel K: your argument might just have some validity…just maybe…except we have been “buying our way out” of spurious claims ever since the treaty was signed, and particularly since the 1940’s…

The Tainui settlement of 1946 is perhaps the best illustration of why an end to historic grievance claims will never come…It was negotiated between PM Peter Fraser and Princess Te Puea Herangi, the matriarch of Tainui at the time, and Aunt of Maori King Koroki (so much for the argument that it was “negotiated with the wrong people”); the settlement was for 6000 pounds “in each and every year in perpetuity”…6000 pounds at the time was the value of a good sized dairy farm (so much for the argument that the settlement was for “trifling sums”); It is correct that the settlement was not inflation indexed…but neither were pensions and leases at the time…everyone suffered equally when inflation became endemic from the 1960’s))

I and others have asked DPF to tell us why he thinks these latest settlements will be any more enduring than the earlier ones…Unless I have missed it, he has never enlightened us regarding the basis of his view…

Excellent. The Waitangi Tribunal plays a useful role in investigating and reporting on historic claims, helping Iwi and the Crown reach settlements.

========================================
If anyone believes that to be true then I can sell you a flying pig, a unicorn that flys daily and stress free life in NZ.
The WT doesn’t investigate anything. It rubber stamps the bullshit provided by the claimants.
The very odd claimant does good investigation but the rest jumble together poor information and the WT accepts it at face value.

If bloggers are going to be recognized as journalists and journalists are supposedly investigative then bloggers need do better than report rubbish like this from the WT and invested interests.

In case you are wondering, to my knowledge their is only one lots of claimants that have thoroughly documented and printed for the public their history leading to their claims. They are Tuhoe.
Now I make no claim that it is completely accurate but you can at least read and test that for yourself.

if it’s good enough for generation after generation of innocent Germans to continue paying through the nose to israel for crimes perpetrated by people long since hanged in that kangaroo court trail at Nuremberg – i’m sure the israeli supporters on this blog who champion that continuance see no problem with honoring the treaty settlements. right?

I agree, David but my understanding is that after the Sir Robin Cooke ruling the Labour Party invented 5 Principles and put them into legislation in 1989 or thereabouts. Is this not the case? Sir Robin Cooke also mentioned the word ‘Partnership’ which he has since tried to say that didn’t mean partnership as such!! There was never ever a partnership created by the Treaty. We were all supposed to be the same under the law and in 1860 at the Kohimarama Conference many Chiefs again swore allegiance to the Queen re-confirming that they knew exactly what the Treaty was about.

Anyway, the Treaty was done and dusted long long ago. It should have been consigned to history long ago. It was only ever made to bring Maori under the same laws as the rest of us. It’s importance is grossly overstated and I believe Queen Victoria’s Royal Charter of 16 November 1840 was a far more important document because it annexed us from NSW rule and allowed us to become our own country. Why is this document not promoted and celebrated because it applied to all of us whereas the Treaty was only to bring Maori under the same laws as the rest of us?

Unity: If there is such legislation enshrining the treaty principles I am not aware of it…it would be good if anyone who knows of such a law would kindly identify it for us…My understanding is the “principles” are still those (10 or so??) which Sir Robin decreed back in the day…

As others more erudite than me have said, the whole notion of “partnership” between a sovereign and his or her subjects is nonsensical…one is the sovereign to whom the subjects swear allegiance, not agree to have a partnership meeting once a year…

As you correctly say, its purpose – or one of them – was to bring Maori under the same law as the others in NZ at the time…but it also granted Maori the very great privilege (in 1840) of becoming British subjects…something I am not aware the evil Brits did anywhere else…Article 3 is of course always conveniently forgotten in any discussion of te tiriti…

Dom: I would ask the same question re Nuremberg…they are lucky they got any sort of trial…there WERE kangaroo courts immediately after the war, that of William Joyce (Lord Haw Haw) being one of them…the man was American born and never became a British citizen,,,but was nonetheless by legal contortion found guilty of treason and hanged…

They were on much sounder ground with John Amery, the son of a wartime cabinet minister…at his execution he is rumoured to have said: “Ah, Mr Pierrepoint,,,I have always wanted to meet you…not in these circumstances of course…”

But I digress…still hoping DPF will grace us with his presence and tell us why he thinks THIS round of “full and final” settlements will endure when numerous earlier ones haven’t…

A very interesting debate. For me, I think we need to get these settlements out of the wayand then put the Treaty to bed so race relations in NZ can move on. While the Treaty hangs over the relationship between Māori and non-Māori there will never be satisfaction on either side. After all the settlements are sorted iwi should have the resources and money to ensure that they have a strong economic base for their members. There is no drip down at this stage so most Māori have not actually directly benefited from these settlements, so the grievance mode should shift from its current position to intra-tribal.

‘pparently reading maketh a full man, David. I guess it only comes down to what each of us has read and what we’re full of afterwards which counts. I’m wary of allowing stephie to conference either of us on the matter, though, so let me just mention that by way of your somewhat exact writing I’m left with images of that wonderful actor Timothy Spall in the very fine movie The Sheltering Sky.

The New Zealand royal blood, Maori blood. If you have it, you get a higher place in society, and paid your dues by those who are beneath you. Note that there are no full blooded Maori, so really, their non-Maori predecessors (the people who put us in this position) have made them into the ultimate troughers.

“if it’s good enough for generation after generation of innocent Germans to continue paying through the nose to israel for crimes perpetrated by people long since hanged in that kangaroo court trail at Nuremberg”

Dom Knots: Your sense of humour -as with much else I suspect – is not mine..I am assuming you are referring to Spall’s excellent performance in the historically accurate “Pierrepoint”…though why you would refer to another movie escapes me…

Um… ShawnLH… I know at least one US judge withdrew from tge Nuremburg trials, saying the evil of the men on trial in no way justified the poor imitation of ‘justice’ that was carried out.. you don’t need to be a neo-nazi to look this up!

RRM: I believe you are right about some Judge resigning at Nuremberg…I can easily believe there was more than one….it is certainly true that the victorious allies drafted ex post facto offences such as Crimes against humanity and then tried the buggers for them…but what else were they to do? Himmler – another vegetarian IIRC – never actually killed anyone personally, and only went to a concentration camp once (he vomited apparently)…There is no written order in existence from Adolf to implement the final solution…(there is from Heydrich, but the end of the war he was long dead) Goering? was there any documentary evidence that he ever ordered any murders? …so what were the allies to do with those so far up the chain of command they never did any “wet work” personally? If the Russians had tried them – and they probably wouldn’t have bothered – each trial might have lasted 20 minutes followed by a quick bullet in the back of the head…

( Oh, and please don’t start posts with Ummm … a particularly annoying leftie habit…and you are not one of them any more)

“Anger at mainland China has never been greater after Beijing warned recently it holds the ultimate authority over the freewheeling capitalist enclave despite agreeing to a Basic Law that gave the city a high degree of autonomy for 50 years after British rule ended in 1997.”

Yes Paul.
I fail to see how people like him cannot take an objective view and access the information we now have available to enable them to understand well documented coverage of historical events that explain what really happened and what life was like back in the 1800’s.
If they choose purposefully, to ignore accurate accounts to pursue personal gain then that is appalling.

The whole ‘partnership’ thing that is being rolled out should have been stopped in its tracks by Key.That would have been a sign of leadership.

Paul M: I had so many things I wanted to do in politics…one of them was help to get rid of Maori seats; another was to return the jurisdiction of the Tribunal to include only breaches after 1975 (when it was first set up)…alas and alack…

There is a lot of statutory legislation that references the treaty principles however leaves them undefined (this task is left to the tribunal), i am no expert, but my understanding is that the closest an actual definition has come to existing at law is the Cooke ruling that David referenced.

“Excellent. The Waitangi Tribunal plays a useful role in investigating and reporting on historic claims, helping Iwi and the Crown reach settlements”

DPF. How can you be so incredibly naïve and badly researched as to think that anything that has been settled under the WT has been anything but a scam on the taxpayer? I know two past members who sat on the WT and they resigned when they found out what a scam it all was. It would have been better if they had blown the lid on the place but you know…NZ politicians, spines and all that.

I doubt that there has been $1 that has been handed over that has been legitimate since 1985. National has presided over the biggest transfer of wealth from the taxpayer to conmen in NZ history. One day it will all be revealed and of course the current mob including John Key will be long gone. It makes my skin crawl.

Unity: The principles of the ToW are fake and all one has to do is follow the authenticated document audit trail back to 1840 to know everything is fake. NZ is a living lie and no wonder we have the separatism we have today.

Your nom de plume is so apt, deadrightkev. You are right on the knocker with this one. I actually think settlements since well before 1985 have been fraudulent. It was all completed satisfactorily with ‘full and final’ settlements long ago. The claimants were more than happy at the time and in some cases they had had more than one ‘full and final’ settlement. Goodness knows what those three words mean!!?? I thought they meant ‘totally finished – finally completed’ etc but obviously I’m wrong.

It’s long overdue for the people of this country to stop being so nice, complacent, apathetic, or whatever and wake up. We need to protest and tell the Government loudly and clearly that it has to stop. As for Maori Statutory Boards, partnerships, co-managements etc., these are totally bogus and the people who believe in them live in fairytale land. We are all supposed to be New Zealanders and should be moving on together – equally under the law.

This is why I’m so against Key – not National as such – because he more than any other Prime Minister has allowed it to happen on his watch. I can’t work out whether he is naive, appeasing or just plain stupid but it really is corruption on a grand scale and affects the rest of us in ways that many haven’t yet woken up to.

Many serving on the Tribunal-the twenty twenty visionists have suffered trauma listening to the evil deeds of the rapacious European settlers. Some have even had to learn Maori. Others have felt ashamed to have been involved in chequebook diplomacy. A reconciliation process preferably enhanced with koha of a pecuniary kind will suffice to ameliorate their unbearable sufferings. I ask that such a Royal Decommission be set up under the auspices of the various parties on a apolitical basis and be-headed by Sir Geoffrey Palmer, in the absence of Sir Doug Graham who may still be allowed to participate using Dotcom interactive media.

Ngai tahu is a manufactured tribe which was once a small North Island rebel group that fled South settling in little enclaves on the SI coast, about 2400 in number. Now look at Ngai tahu, the clever elites such as Stephen “Tipene” Oregan have expanded it into a taxpayer funded corporate that has enriched a small group of part Maori, initially courtesy of their head negotiator Chris Finlayson. Look where Finlayson is now, minister of treaty claims no less. Mugabe would be impressed, but where is the public oversight and where are the politicians in NZ standing up for taxpayers on this? Nowhere, all too scared to be called racist.

Read Stuart C Scott’s two books Travesty of Waitangi and Travesty after Travesty. Those two books explain in documented and verified detail how National (courtesy of another treaty minister Doug Montrose Graham) in particular has been at the centre of the treaty claims hand-out industry all the way along, however, Labour (Margaret Wilson carried it on) has been just as guilty. Richard Prebble and Geoffrey Palmer undoubtedly created the treaty industry and current growth of separatism in NZ which is unlikely to be reversed without some form of revolution. I think it is those two that the NZ public needs to call out.

It would be nice to think a politician on the right might stand up and say enough is enough this election but I wont hold my breath. If Colin Craig is listening – here is your 5% issue if you want to get over the line.

You are dead right Kev!! I total agree with everything you have said. Sadly, if we are to reverse the racist apartheid in this country, I’m afraid it isn’t going to be without rancour, to put it mildly.

So right Kev.
On the Conservatives Christine Rankin spoke out strongly about the Auckland Councils race based statutory authority and I think closer to the election this could be a big issue for them especially in Auckland.
There policy is certainly to get rid of race based seats and the Waitangi Tribunal.

Unity, on Key.
He’s a wheeler dealer not a leader.
He was unable to overcome this when doing a deal with the racist party so can’t back down.
If he was a leader with the country in his best interests he would never have agreed to the co-governance , partnership approach and the elevation of some in our society because of race.

I absolutely agree with you Wiseowl. He was a trader by trade and he’s certainly trading away our country. I dread to think where we will be in the next 3 years. He’s a much better alternative than Labour/Greens but then, is he? We desperately need either the Conservatives and/or NZ First to help rein Key in.